SOMEWHERE AN INDIVIDUAL USES A 1939 PROOF JEFFERSON NICKEL VALUED AT $160 TO PURCHASE A CAN OF SODA; LEAVING IT IN THE MACHINE TO BE RETURNED AS CHANGE UPON SUBSEQUENT PURCHASES.

The sounds ofsprinklers and chainsawsall summer longall summer I suppose

wealth is what we make itand we make itunemployed for a summer or so

I simply cannot rememberhow we forgot about the effects of afternoon sunlight¬¬¬and flittering grass in the late day windthe one that feels like a precipitous falland how the definitive change we neededwas our changing definition of value

In general, value can be understood as the moral principles and beliefs, or accepted standards, of a person or social group

for whatever it’s worthThomas Jefferson said:“The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money”but I treasure cool days and nights like the ones that find me herewith cloudy calm companionsand a touch of apprehension just to taste

In Mathematics value means magnitude or quantity; the number represented by a figure, symbol, or the like: the value of an angle; the value of x; the value of a sum.

let’s look at the price of coca-cola remaining a nickel from 1886-1959 as a case studypart of the problem in raising the price was the cost of replacing vending machines that accepted only nickelsand so you see howsometimes keeping everything the samerepresents the best option

there will come a point when the best option is no longer an optionand that is what I believe prompted the callthe 6 month mantra of2 weeks notice2 weeks notice2 weeks notice

In Sociology value refers to the ideals, customs, institutions, etc., of a society toward which the people of the group have an affective regard; these values may be positive or negative.

in 1939 Herbert Blumer argued that in society there is no clear distinction between attitude and value...and it is our attitude that is of value in this discussion

and to our ears come the words“quality of life decision”from our social circles, all those who surround us, and the orange day-glow in the clouds of 11pmI say “searching for a state without light pollution”with more clouds on the ground than in the skyso that we might watch the firefliessignal to the stars or satellites abovehoping to harvest the valuable informationeven if the messages themselves cannot be decrypted

In Ethics value is defined as any object or quality desirable as a means or as an end in itself.

In the conclusion to his book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber writes that we are born into involuntary servitude to mechanized industry:“For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.”

from the land of coke and steelfrom the loins of the those with the factory worn handsmy father and his fathertaking 40 year tourstending the never-endingriver of glassI learned the lessonwith my swing-shift formative yearsand I’m not looking back...or to the side of the industry lined interstatesthat we’ve navigated to make it this far

In the Fine Arts value is the degree of lightness or darkness in a color or the relation of light and shade in a painting, drawing, or the like.

when we stood in front of Sargent’s “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” at the Tatepainted in England during the period of his social withdrawal from France after “Madam X”maybe that’s where and when I got the ideaso long ago, of value being formed by a study in contrasts it’s the time of day here, or is it nightwhen the community starts to turn on their lightsthat it is easiest to see insideto televisions, dinner tables, and the bulbs above their headsas we drive by further on into the nightor is it the daywhen the lights and the sunhang on opposite ends forming an equilibriumit is the equanimity we previously lacked

In Phonetics value denotes quality or the phonetic equivalent of a letter, as the sound of “a” in hat, sang, etc.

it is when you now pronounce my name hereit is the “e” soundthe first to colonize disturbed landsthat now rises upand floats awaylike the seed dispersed ruderalsthat populate the fields of our evening walksthis, all the proof I need for our constitutional